U.S. Navy nurse won't force-feed Guantanamo detainees

By Shimon Prokupecz and Bill Mears, CNN

Updated 8:31 AM ET, Wed July 16, 2014

Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay23 photos

Inside Guantanamo Bay – President Barack Obama signed an executive order on January 22, 2009, to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. Nearly six years later, the prison for terrorism suspects remains open. Click through for a look inside the controversial facility. Here, President George W. Bush's official picture is replaced by Obama's in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo on January 20, 2009, the day the latter was sworn in as president.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – The U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay has held terror suspects since January 2002. Early in the war on terror, the Bush administration argued these detainees were "enemy combatants" who didn't have the protections accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Here, a detainee stands at an interior fence at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A Navy sailor surveys the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009. In December 2013, Congress passed a defense spending bill that makes it easier to transfer detainees out of the facility.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – U.S. military guards move a detainee inside the detention center in September 2010. At its peak, the detainee population exceeded 750 men at Guantanamo.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A military doctor holds a feeding tube used to feed detainees on a hunger strike at a Camp Delta hospital at Guantanamo in June 2013. In March 2013, the U.S. military announced that dozens of detainees had begun a hunger strike. By that June, more than 100 detainees were on a hunger strike, and more than 40 were being force-fed, military officials said.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Muslim detainees kneel during early morning prayers in October 2009. Cells are marked with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, regarded as Islam's holy city.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A soldier stands near a placard on the fence line of the detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A Quran sits among a display of items isssued to detainees in September 2010. The suspects are given a prayer mat and a copy of the Muslim holy book as well as a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and clothing.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay – A U.S. military guard walks out of the maximum security section of the detention center in September 2010.

Inside Guantanamo Bay – A seat and shackle await a detainee in the DVD room of the maximum security Camp 5 detention center in March 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – U.S. Marines join in martial arts training at the U.S. naval base in September 2010.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay – Members of the military walk the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Guards move a detainee from his cell in Cell Block A of the Camp 6 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A detainee waits for lunch in September 2010. The cost of building Guantanamo's high-security detention facilities was reportedly about $54 million.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Marines get an early-morning workout at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A bus carries military guards from their night shift at the detention center in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A military guard puts on gloves before moving a detainee within the detention center in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Members of the U.S. Navy move down the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A U.S. military guard holds shackles before preparing to move a detainee in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – An American flag flies over Camp 6 at Guantanamo in June 2013.

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Story highlights

U.S. military nurse reportedly refuses to take part in forced feedings

Pentagon official confirms "recent instance"

Detainee has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002

Attorneys for a Guantanamo Bay detainee on a hunger strike say a U.S. military nurse has refused to conduct forced feedings of inmates.

Abu Wa'el Dhiab has been at the U.S. Navy base on Cuba since August 2002, attorney Cori Crider told CNN.

Crider says Dhiab told her in a telephone call last week about the reported actions of the unnamed male nurse, believed to be a Navy medical officer.

"Initially, he did carry out his orders and participate in the tube feedings. But when he came, as soon as he saw what was happening, he started talking to the brothers," meaning the inmates, Dhiab was quoted as saying. "He explained to us: 'Before we came here, we were told a different story. The story we were told was completely the opposite of what I saw.' Once he saw with his own eyes that what he was told was contrary to what was actually taking place here, he decided he could not do it anymore."

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A Pentagon official late Tuesday confirmed, "There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry-out the enteral feeding of a detainee. The matter is in the hands of the individual's leadership. The service member has been temporarily assigned to alternate duties with no impact to medical support operations."

There are 147 personnel attached to the Joint Medical Group, of which 83 are responsible for direct detainee care.

The military refers to the controversial process as "enteral feeding," which is designed to provide liquid nutrition and medicine via a tube inserted in the nose directly into the stomach. CNN was recently given a tour of the hospital at Guantanamo, where the forced feeding procedures were demonstrated without the involvement of any inmate.

Dhiab is part of a group of detainees who are participating in a hunger strike to protest their continued, open-end detention without charges being filed, said Crider, who works at the London-based legal defense group Reprieve.

Crider said it was believed to be the first time one of the U.S. medical personnel has refused to carry out the feeding regimen.

"This nurse showed incredible courage -- to see the basic humanity of the prisoners and to recognize that force-feeding is wrong is a historic stand," Crider told CNN. "It meant a great deal to my client and to the other cleared detainees who are hunger striking."

Through his legal team, Dhiab has filed a federal lawsuit, protesting the forced-feeding policy. The U.S. military has justified it as humane and necessary to keep the inmate alive. There are about 150 inmates currently at Guantanamo.

Supporters of Dhiab say he is among more than 40 men who at one time in the past few years were being forced fed.

In their June 2013 lawsuit, Dhiab and three other men urged the court to intervene quickly.

"Petitioners request an expeditious hearing on this application because of the extreme nature of the human rights and medical ethics violations that result from petitioners' force-feeding," said the lawsuit, "and because of the imminent risk that it will deprive them of the ability to observe the Ramadan fast," which typically happens in July.

"Petitioners do not trust the Guantanamo doctors and nurses, because those staff have been ordered by their superior officers to subject petitioners to a force-feeding regimen they reject and which causes them humiliation and pain."

Dhiab, 43, was captured in 2002 in Pakistan. His supporters deny he is a terrorist and say the Syrian had been operating a food import business in Kabul, Afghanistan before the 9/11 terror attacks.

He has been cleared for release since 2009, but U.S. officials said they were reluctant to send him back to Syria because of that country's ongoing civil war. His supporters say he could be sent to Uruguay, but there is no indication when any transfer would happen.

A federal judge in May allowed Dhiab to be forced-fed to keep him alive, but strongly urged authorities to use other methods, criticizing the Pentagon's continued "refusal to compromise."

"The court is in no position to make the complex medical decisions necessary to keep Mr. Dhiab alive," said Judge Gladys Kessler. "Mr. Dhiab may well suffer unnecessary pain from certain enteral feeding practices and forcible cell extractions. However, the court simply cannot let Mr. Dhiab die."

Kessler also ordered the Obama administration to release 34 video recordings of Dhiab being forced-fed, as well as the detainee's medical records.